Lose Beer Belly

You want to lose a Beer Belly? Check your calories intake. The long-term effects of beer drinking are well known.

Your six-pack abs will not show because of the six-pack you drink.

Some call this a "beer gut", "beer belly", "pot belly", or "love handles".

Some of these impolite terms do not take in to account the fact that the sight of these beauties on a man's frame drives women crazy. Women love them.

These terms also go against what beer drinkers believe and hold sacred.

Excess calories that are not burned when consumed are stored as fat, regardless of their source. Beer calories do not deposit themselves right at the stomach any more than excess calories from any food or beverage.

The beer belly does not just result from drinking beer. It is from excess calories, and beer is very high in calories. This explains the high propensity of beer drinkers to get such a fat deposition.

Such men have normal size legs, normal size trunk and arms, and either basketball deformity or the watermelon deformity right in the tummy. This is also commonly referred to as apple shape.

The apple is where the excess fat is deposited around the stomach or the upper body. The hips and thighs remain lean.

Men are susceptible to this form of obesity more than women are. Women tend to have the pear shape.

The pear shape is where fat gathers on the hips and thighs; the upper body is relatively unaffected.

The body is pear-shaped if the waist-to-hip ratio, (the size of the waist divided by the size of the hips), is 0.80 or lower.

If the ratio is higher than 0.80, the body is apple-shaped.

There are more health risks linked with the apple shape than with the pear shape.

A beer belly is essentially visceral fat around the intestines and other abdominal organs. Visceral fat is more dangerous than subcutaneous fat.

For men, if your waist circumference is greater than 40 inches (102 cm), you are at a high risk of getting heart disease, heart attacks and developing hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure and diabetes.

For women, if your waist circumference is greater than 35 inches (88 cm), you have high risk of developing heart disease and related illnesses.

Binge drinkers are more likely to develop a beer belly than people who consume the same amount of alcohol but spread out their intake. Binge drinkers also tend to have more serious ill health.

A beer belly is fat and first place excess calories are deposited, it is usually the last areas you will drop the fat from.

In addition, the older you get, (after age of 25) the harder it is to lose fat. Your body metabolism starts to slow down, and this makes your energy levels drop. This further hampers your body's ability to burn fat.

An enzyme known as ACE has been shown to play a minor role in the way fat cells grow. Men who inherited one particular form of the ACE gene from both parents were 80% more likely to be overweight and 75% more likely to have fat bellies.

This form of the gene is not the only factor that increases risk of fat bellies and obesity.

However, men with this specific form of the ACE gene inherited from both parents have a greater tendency to accumulate abdominal fat as they become older.

Men who find they are developing a beer belly should watch their diet, limit the number of calories they take and exercise.